Rugby Coach - 5 Steps to More Effective Rucking

Written by Dan Cottrell, Editor of Rugby Coach Newsletter

5 Steps to More Effective Rucking Spruce up your rucking technique to get quicker ball

1. Ruck beyond When a player hits a ruck, they should aim to end up beyond ball. Even better is for them to be on their feet, moving forward two or three metres beyond ball. This prevents danger of too any bodies over ball. Too often players come to rest on ruck or just lean over. This just adds to traffic, legs and feet getting way of scrum half trying to clear ball.

2. Inside foot When players arrive they should put their inside foot over ball. This leads to three great advantages: ∑ Driving through and out, so clearing players more effectively ∑ Stronger body position through centre of ruck ∑ Less chance of feet hitting ball

3. Spine in line The old coaching adage in rucking, but easily forgotten Ė get spine in line with direction of play to gain maximum power through contact area. Bums to posts (meaning bums in line with posts) is another phrase being shouted at players at moment. It also makes good sense from point of view of referee, who will penalise players who come in from side.

Rugby Coach - Making core skills fun

Written by Dan Cottrell, Editor of Rugby Coach Newsletter

Making core skills fun. Improving core skills is important to player and team. But players, however motivated, will need some new ways of approaching core skill to add variety to practices. Here are some different ways of adding an element of fun to handling activities.

Variety

Practice normal passing and then change to an unusual form of passing before returning to core pass being examined. For instance when looking at offloads, make players try one handed back flicks in tackle for a couple of rounds of drill.

Time trials

After going through some of drills, try putting a time limit on achieving a certain target, e.g. five passes in one area followed by fives passes in another in 30 seconds. The element of pressure builds a certain amount of tension, but also can lead to players enjoying success. If they can beat their times or other groupís times, they will enjoy task even more.

Unusual areas

Donít just practice in boxes or circles, use different shapes set out by cones to force players to think in different ways. Some coaches set out a snake like shape with differing widths in which players must progress up pitch.

Also try handling on a sharper incline, or in long grass.

Different size balls

With all different types of promotional balls, as well as age group balls, there are at least five separate sizes of rugby ball out there. Donít just practice with one size, get players to handle using all shapes and sizes in one practice. The variety of shapes will challenge players to change way they may take and give a pass.